Abstract

ALIANE, Poliana Patrício; MAMEDE, Marli Vilela  and  FURTADO, Erikson Felipe. A Systematic Review on Risk Factors Associated to Postpartum Depression. Psicol. pesq. [online]. 2011, vol.5, n.2, pp. 146-155. ISSN 1982-1247.

This study sought to investigate risk factors associated to postpartum depression. A systematic review of the literature was conducted on the databases PubMed, Scielo and Lilacs, with the keywords postpartum depression, risk factors and epidemiological studies. Inclusion criteria: articles published in the last fi ve years in the following languages: English, Portuguese or Spanish; the sampling consisted of women above 18 years of age, with the postpartum depression assessment undertaken at least fifteen days after birth. There were 35 articles selected. From those, 70 risk factors were associated to postpartum depression. The risk factors that appear more frequently were psychological/psychiatric ones. The development of the investigations about postpartum depression has privileged the knowledge about psychosocial risk factors. A low frequency of hormonal/genetic factors appeared in these studies. The conclusion points out to the need of pregnant women in risk situation to be identified in the prenatal care in order to allow preventive actions for postpartum depression.

Keywords : Postpartum depression; risk factors; review; women´s health.